Some scenarios from the European Commission’s decarbonisation strategy suggest that Europe needs up to 450GW of offshore wind by 2050. WindEurope has asked BVGA to examine what is required for Europe to deliver and make effective use of 450GW of capacity. Our work will be published by WindEurope as the flagship report at its 2019 Conference in Copenhagen in November .
Underpinning this work is our geospatial analysis of LCOE. Geospatial analysis helps answer several difficult questions. These include:
- What area is available for low-cost wind sites?
- What capacity can be developed in low cost areas?
- Are those areas available for development, considering environmental and other exclusions, such as shipping lanes?
- How does LCOE vary across a given area?
- Even if we assume they use the same technology, how do different sites compare in terms of LCOE?
- What is the best way to communicate this type of information?
Geospatial analysis allows the production of dazzling multi-coloured graphics such as those in our 2017 report Unleashing Europe’s Offshore Wind Potential for WindEurope. As the example below demonstrates, these graphics enable the results of complex analysis to be quickly understood by a range of wide range of stakeholders.
Source: Unleashing Europe’s offshore wind potential June 2017, BVG Associates for WindEurope
In future posts, we’ll be outlining how we built this map of the likely LCOE of offshore wind locations in 2030 based on our upside scenario in the 2017 report. A wide range of factors were used to inform the analysis. These posts will outline how we incorporated key factors to produce the final LCOE picture. Such factors included technical capacity, exclusion areas, wind speed, distance to port, site depth and foundation choice. Using the effect on cost, energy and LCOE of each of these variables, a summary LCOE map was developed.
In the meantime, if you’d like to know about how our geospatial work can help your project minimize costs and maximise revenue, get in touch.